God's Callgirl

by Carla Van Raay

  Some part of me wanted to be ordinary, and a full-time mother. Life with James would certainly give me that. I had been on the game for a year; perhaps it would be best to leave while I was still enjoying it. In a move designed to end my licentious lifestyle for ever, I sold all my furniture in one weekend, pulled out the phone and disappeared without notice to any of my clients—a lack of courtesy I have always regretted, but it seemed necessary at the time. In a single day I reverted from a prostitute with a busy clientele to a dutiful housewife. Caroline and I said a sad goodbye to Kelly and Jimmy, but Caroline was overjoyed to have her daddy so close by. That is what pleased me most of all, to see her so happy.

  James must have thought that he had finally conquered his wayward wife, but alas, poor man, it wasn’t so. It was strange between us after that year of separation. After my year’s experience with other men, I needed someone stronger than me, in every sense. I respected James for his strength of purpose in getting me to come back to him, but my reasons were based on wanting to be a good woman and a good mother, not because I loved him deeply.

  HAL WAS A tall, rather well-set, soft-bodied man, quiet but humorous, who delighted his friends with a unique gentle quirkiness. His large round head was covered with a thin layer of blond hair parted on one side, and he had a careful intelligence. His was a sensitive soul, open to deeper things. He had once been drawn into Scientology, only to end up feeling badly used and disillusioned.

  Hal drove his car as if flying a plane. Going for a drive with him was like taking a ride in Luna Park—he used such precise, hair-splitting judgment in his manoeuvres that he often caused terrible consternation among other drivers. He lived alone with his mother, having emigrated from Estonia to Perth in the same year that my family had settled in Melbourne. When we met, he was still a virgin.

  Hal made no advances towards me—out of respect for his friend, James—and so it seemed I seduced him. It was I who went to visit him, and found we could discuss deep things like metaphysics. I was in awe of Hal’s intellect; I loved his keen book radar (sci-fi and metaphysics) and his penchant for gentle, soothing music. What did he see in me? An ardour that was too flattering for a shy virgin to resist?

  In hindsight, I think we fell in love because there were dynamics from previous lifetimes to be worked out, issues to be resolved. Several experiences over the years had opened my eyes to the possibility of reincarnation and how it can sometimes give insight into why people’s lives become intertwined.

  Within weeks I had fallen helplessly in love with Hal. I confessed this to James as we lay in bed one morning.‘I have to leave you. I need to be with Hal.’ James, with characteristic leniency, did not berate me. He couldn’t look at me, though, and I saw him swallow hard.

  James’s heart was broken once again. But for the sake of Caroline, the four of us lived together as a household for two years. Both James and Hal were soft-hearted, generous types and we always managed to remain amicable with one another. I discovered later, however, that Hal found it very difficult to cope and was close to leaving until I made the decision to be his sole partner.

  JAMES, HAL, CAROLINE and I were joined by baby Victoria in 1975, born to Hal and me when Caroline was three. On the morning of her birth, I woke early to get ready. I collected my clothes and cosmetics, then woke Hal. This time I wanted to do everything right for my baby. I had arranged that Hal would be present at the birth and that my baby would stay with me beside my bed.

  They were both promises the matron had no intention of keeping, but my loud protests made her change her mind. All the same, she made sure Victoria was taken away while I slept—why, I am not sure, since she was the only baby born that week in Warwick Hospital.

  I was anxious and angry, but helpless. ‘Did she cry in the night?’ I asked each morning. ‘No,’ they told me, again and again. Were they lying? I couldn’t tell. Meanwhile, my milk was in oversupply, hurting my breasts. One of the nurses was a kind sort. She told me to massage my breasts and came over to demonstrate how to do it. It was such a relief to feel her kind hands taking away the pressing pain. We were both shocked by the matron’s stern, shrieking voice: ‘Sister, get back to your work and leave her alone!’The confused nurse scurried away.

  I left that hospital as soon as I could. Back home, I knew the bliss of motherhood once more. I was good with tiny babies; I would not be so patient and attentive when they became older and more demanding.

  In 1976, James, Hal and I founded a rural community in Queensland, which still exists today as a community farm. James built a cabin house there for Caroline and himself, and Hal, Victoria and I lived in a pole house proudly built by Hal.

  Our dream of a utopian farming co-operative soured and we left the rural community feeling broken-hearted. Hal, Victoria and I moved to Brisbane, where we shared a house with a family who had a little girl of Victoria’s age. James, on the other hand, had been offered work in Melbourne. Caroline was asked who she preferred to live with—her father or me—and she chose to be with James. It was a pivotal moment, but even though she was so young, I had the distinct feeling that Caroline knew what she truly wanted when she chose to move south with her father. And it was the best thing, we all agreed, since the two girls did not get on together at all. So Caroline had to do without her mother throughout her growing years. It is hard to think of how much she must have missed me. I even missed out on seeing her for her birthday when she turned six. Now that I’m a grandmother, it is almost inconceivable that I could bear to be parted from such a sweet, vulnerable and beautiful girl.

  HAL AND I HAD moved to a rented house in Ashfield, Brisbane, when he decided to take a break to visit his mother in Perth, his only relative, and also spend some time with an old friend there. I folded myself into his big chest as we said a fond goodbye. Hal was such a good match for my height; people who saw us together always said there was something about us that looked just right. Hal’s eyes gazed deeply into mine. I wouldn’t see him for two whole weeks. Then, to my great surprise, he foraged in his trouser pocket and gave me a condom.

  I looked at him with wide eyes: what did this mean? I had never been unfaithful to Hal. ‘Do you expect me to go rampant just because you’re going away for a while?’ I was incredulous.

  Hal chuckled, his wide shoulders lightly shaking. ‘Just in case,’ was his cryptic reply.

  Was this a test of some kind? At the time, that thought didn’t enter my mind. I took this gift to mean that he did not want me to be lonely while he was gone. We were both liberal in our thinking; for instance, we had joined the Sunshine Nudist Club and regularly enjoyed weekends away with them, taking Victoria along. The activities were full of innocent fun for adults and children alike.

  Nevertheless, I didn’t expect to end up, one week later, in bed with a guy I hardly knew! I hadn’t gone looking for him; he was a predator, a friend of a girlfriend, who was interested only in charming, conquering and leaving. He was very suave, so different from any man I had experienced before. I wrote to Hal about the encounter in glowing terms, thanking him for the condom. It had served its purpose after all!

  Hal was deeply hurt. He wrote his black disappointment in a terse letter. I was confused, but in hindsight I can see I should not have been surprised. I determined to be more careful with Hal’s feelings, and to stay out of the way of other men.

  I had not reckoned, however, with Bill, also a nudist, who wanted me to acknowledge that there was a special bond between us. And there was. Bill loved my particular brand of elegance, and I admired a certain loyal gallantry in his character. There were many subtle aspects to our attraction. I delighted in it, but didn’t see why this specialness couldn’t remain non-physical. Bill was older and taller than me, intelligent and married—happily married.

  During one of Bill’s visits to me we had a lively discussion about politics, his favourite topic. I was showing him out when he took charge of the situation. He pinned me against the wall of the hallway and looked me in the eyes
as his hands went up my skirt and pulled down my panties. It was his clear intent, together with his lack of aggression or lack of lust of the selfish kind, that held me. His soft grey eyes were tender, his face was like an angel’s and his curly hair, lit up by the light, looked like a halo. He entered me while we were both standing. I was overcome with sudden bliss and clung to him. How could I be so ready for him, and he know it so exactly? It proved that true love is just what it is, beyond all morals.

  It sounds strange, but this one act bonded me to Bill for the rest of my life, in spite of my commitment at that time to Hal and Bill’s lifelong commitment to his wife. Bill hid nothing from his wife, that person dearest to him in all the world, and I stayed friends with both of them. Bill and I have kept up a regular correspondence for the last twenty-three years. To me he is a chivalrous knight. To him, I am his dear Valentine. We shall always remember that single act of love.

  HAL WAS WORKING as an electrical draughtsman and I was teaching again, when life took another turn, as if orchestrated from afar. A massage course I took in Brisbane in the winter of 1979 resulted in an invitation to work as a masseuse for a new suburban clinic.

  I spent six months there, receiving pleased feedback from clients who said I had a special gift, a touch that made them feel immediately better. Some of the guys responded by getting sexually excited—there was something in me that called it forth in spite of myself—and I would playfully slap them on the buttocks to mock their erections. I had to become more and more serious to control the situation.

  In the end, though, I relented. I tried to keep it secret from the proprietress, but the noises of ecstasy must have penetrated the walls. Nothing was said, but she upped the rental fee on my room. It was then that it occurred to me to save both rent and further embarrassment by striking out on my own.

  I was a good masseuse, well-trained, skilled and conscious now of my special gift of touch. Soon I became Queen of The Massage Parlour—my own business located in a convenient granny flat in the backyard. Hal did not object, since I did not sexually involve myself with my male clients. Besides, whatever he may have been feeling, Hal valued his liberal thinking above all.

  At the end of 1979, Hal, Victoria and I moved back to Perth to be close to Hal’s mother. James and Caroline returned soon after and we temporarily shared the same house again. Caroline was almost seven and attended the local primary school. She seemed a healthy and lively child, full of excitement about being close to her mum again. However, she and Victoria still could not be together for long without fighting. In later years, both confided to me that she thought of the other as the specially loved one and was jealous.

  I continued with my massage business, setting up in a room at home. I gave relief massage to clients that wanted it, but did not agree to sexual intercourse or to being touched up. I insisted that performing relief massage with these sorts of boundaries would not affect our relationship, and Hal did not complain. All the same, around this time I underwent tubal ligation surgery, freeing me from the need for contraceptives. My mind had not turned consciously to promiscuity, but is it possible to make plans that we keep secret even from ourselves?

  IF ONLY I HAD never parted from Hal.

  After our lovemaking, when I rested in the feel of him, breathing easily, wholly satisfied, he was exactly what I wanted him to be. I loved his ambience, the soothing, gentle aura around him.

  Our friends would bring any broken electronic gear to our place to see if Hal could fix it. He would put his hand on the thing and, most of the time, that’s all it needed. Hal had a special love of angelic music and taped all of Jaroslav Kovaricek’s Dreamtime programs, which were played in the dead of night on ABC FM. Apart from all that, Hal was the most considerate and accomplished lover—my perfect sexual partner.

  So why on earth did I leave him? What do we know of the script in our deep subconscious that we feel obliged to follow, this blueprint hidden in our psyche? Forces beyond my reckoning or control were continually asserting themselves, guiding events unerringly. Some may call it the will of God unfolding, but it might just as well be called the unstoppable human urge to grow, to enter chaos in order to find a greater perfection there.

  Or it could be seen as even simpler than that. No man is without his faults. And a woman can’t stay with a man if she isn’t willing to accommodate them. Hal had traits that sent me up the proverbial wall.

  He was a pacifist, meaning, among other things, that he would not tolerate boundaries being set around our daughter. Powerfully intellectual, he could floor me with his immutable reasonings, sending me into a frenzy of impotent outrage at what I called his dishonesty.

  ‘Victoria’s pocket money is my gift to her,’ he would argue, ‘and it isn’t to be used as leverage to make her behave better. You know how I hate teaching children even to say please and thank you. It should come naturally or else we are raising children with false manners.’

  And so Victoria felt free to be rude, free to not contribute to any chores around the house. In my view, her generous pocket money was probably construed as a reward for bad behaviour, coming plentifully and faithfully no matter what she did or did not do.

  Hal never lost his cool when I lost mine. He would laugh softly, enjoying the power he had over me. He saw in my eyes the contempt I felt for his dishonesty, and still mocked me. Nothing is more sure to undermine a relationship than contempt.

  I left him in a fit of total pique one day, settled in a house nearby and brought Victoria—at school now—to live with me. After a few months I relented and went back. Then I would leave again, or send him away. For twelve years this went on, the breaks getting longer and longer, our daughter staying sometimes with me, at other times with him, until he put an end to it.

  ‘I have never actually loved you,’ he said by way of closure, a week before he did what he had always said he never would do: get married—and to a woman twenty-one years younger than me.

  GOD’S CALLGIRL

  ON MY OWN again, I was free to indulge my clients—and myself—without restrictions. But I wanted to find an inspiration for my work, to lift the level of my game. I started to look around for a good source of motivation. If a person has to create a positive motive, mightn’t she be covering up lesser ones? If she has to manufacture justifications to reinforce her desires, mustn’t she feel doubtful about them in the first place? I didn’t want to think that deeply. I just wanted to pinpoint what it was that I wanted to express, to give it words, an image, an ideal.

  I found my inspiration unexpectedly at an exhibition of ancient Chinese vases in Perth. I was completely mesmerised by the pictures painted on their roundness of Chinese nuns, fully dressed, but clearly in coitus, offering their eager vulvas to well-hung men who looked like travelling merchants.

  A story instantly welled up in my brain, explaining everything. These merchants were far away from home for long stretches at a time as they travelled on foot or with pack animals around the countryside, so my tale began. In ancient China, men who needed female chi to balance their energy were not forbidden by society to visit nuns. (I didn’t know whether their wives might forbid them visiting any other women.) Yes, I decided, that’s what it was about for the men: balancing out their energy in a much more wholesome way than masturbating, which did not include an exchange of female energy. It was a simple, natural wisdom; unlike the Western world’s attitude towards sex, sullied by centuries of repressive religion.

  The nuns, so my heady story continued, needed the men for their own purposes. They used the sexual act as an ecstatic meditation on God, and at the same time provided themselves with a living.

  There were rules to the game. It was vital for the nun and her client to share the right emotional approach in order to excite the desired psychic and spiritual energies. Through his respectful attitude, the merchant could participate in and benefit from the nun’s state of spiritual ecstasy, I told myself, getting more and more excited, fervent even, as I grew more certa
in of the purpose of my own work.

  I saw some younger men in the paintings. Students, I imagined. So students, being single, could also avail themselves of the nuns’ service. These Chinese students were not country bumpkins without manners, and they became even more refined through their sexual encounters with the nuns. The purpose of the sex was not self-indulgence, but to achieve equanimity of the spirit. Whew! The movie in my head sent me reeling, my blood was up—there would be no stopping me now.

  The fantasy suited me—and that was the whole point, although I suppose there could have been some truth in it. Were there ever nuns in China? Buddhist ones, perhaps? No matter; from now on, I would visualise myself as someone who served her customers out of a pure desire to balance their energy by offering them her precious feminine juices. They would leave feeling peaceful, blessed and cleansed—

  God’s Callgirl would bring out the best in them! And in return, my customers would do me good as well.

  I never told any of my clients about my vision. It did none of them any harm, and my new attitude paid off in one very important sense. For a long time—until I forgot my vision and became lost in the mire of reality—I was able to feel good about what I did.

  Creative juices flowed easily from my heart and body. Grace seemed to pour out of my hands and nectar out of my fanny. I enjoyed touching and giving pleasure—and being touched in return by so many different hands, tongues, bodies. I got to know the lovemaking habits of many men and admired how they could take command in a gentle directive way when I invited them to. When they were stuck in an unimaginative routine, I would help them to vary it. There was no position out of the question: on the edge of the massage table, on the floor, on a chair, against the wall. Or in the shower. I loved to wash down some of my clients and share the sensuousness of slippery soap between our bodies. The missionary position was my least favoured: it didn’t give the right fit for the best sensations. After a soothing and sensual massage, I preferred to climb onto the table and right on top of my client, who was more than ready by then.